Scrambles, our Buff Orpington hen, and Violet, one of our Australorps, both went broody and are sitting on Indian Runner duck eggs and Pilgrim goose eggs:

Abigail, our Pilgrim goose, went broody a while ago but then left her nest. I put those eggs in the incubator to finish hatching; however, she laid a new clutch in a nest she built under the duck house and now is sitting quite seriously. I think she may actually finish the job this time!

In a few weeks when work winds down for the year I will resume posting here more regularly. I also have started a new blog related solely to our farm:

We have successfully incubated Uncle Waldo and Abigail’s first set of eggs! Four goslings were set to hatch today, and they all made it out of the shell, although one needed a little help. One more will hatch in two days, we hope.

Two days ago I noticed when I candled their eggs that they had internally pipped into the air cell. Yesterday evening when I got home from work they had all started to externally pip through the shell:

The penciled-in cross shows where the air cell dipped down to:

This morning they had enlarged their pip holes quite a bit.

First one out!

It’s lonely being the first one out, so she cuddled around her sibling’s egg to take a nap while waiting:

They slowly worked their egg tooth around in a circle to create a hinge at the top of the blunt end of the egg:

One little head poking out of an egg:

The empty egg shell:

This little guy just wasn’t making much progress so we gingerly began to crack away little bits of the eggshell. I put him back in the incubator like this and he made the rest of the trip out by himself:

I just cannot believe our good fortune! God certainly is blessing us in the poultry area at the moment.

She’d built her nest awhile ago and had been laying an egg in it every other day. I collected some for the incubator and had been storing the rest in the basement because the nights have still been dropping below freezing and she wasn’t sitting yet.

But today I put those eight eggs back in her nest because it isn’t supposed to freeze again, and shortly thereafter she commenced sitting!

I was surprised that Uncle Waldo wasn’t with her and is instead spending this lovely sunny spring day out on the pond.

He kept close tabs on me while I was busy planting a new Stanley plum tree and a Red Haven peach tree, but he didn’t try to attack me.

I put food and a bucket of water in the duck-n-goose house with Abigail and quietly closed the door to keep the chickens from pestering her, as they seemed determined to do.

Here is some helpful information about broody geese from Domestic Geese by Dr. Chris Ashton:

“More females are lost in spring through lack of care than at any other time. It is essential to make a note of the date when the goose first sat seriously, both for the sake of her health and that of the goslings. Females that have been left to sit for more than 32 days off and find it very difficult to revive their appetite, and sometimes die.

First of all, the goose and gander should be wormed when she is definitely broody. The gander also tends to lose his appetite when the goose is sitting. The advantage of worming for the goose is that she does not lose so much condition while she is sitting and, if she becomes ill, one possible cause of disease is eliminated. Also, both birds will be free of worms when they lead the goslings out.

The goose must be fed and watered once a day. This should not be too hurried an affair, as she will want to carefully cover her eggs with down, so that they remain warm in the nest for some time and are camouflaged. Wheat in a bucket of water is suitable, and the goose should be encouraged to swim if the weather is hot and dry, as this will give the eggs the correct amount of moisture.

If the birds are tame, the feeding and watering procedure is not a problem, as a tame goose will allow you to look at the eggs and left her off the nest, and a tame gander will not attack. In these circumstances, a goose can be fed twice a day if she is losing too much condition. With fierce birds it is much more problematical, and it is best to drive the gander to a place out of the way when you want to drive the goose off the nest, otherwise smashed eggs will result. Geese that are accustomed to sitting will probably look after themselves, but you must check. Young birds need more attention because they have not been through this process before, and can become very run down by sitting too tightly.” (Ashton, pp 131-133).

Provided she stays on the nest and the eggs are viable, the goslings should hatch on May 8th!

This has been my little surgery-recuperation spot, with a rocking chair, reading material and incubators close at hand. Currently I am (finally) reading SJWs Always Lie, which I received as a birthday gift this year, as well as Storey’s Guide to Raising Turkeys, in anticipation of 15 Midget White poults due to arrive in June.

Also, Domestic Geese by Dr. Chris Ashton has been invaluable as I learn to hatch the notoriously challenging-to-incubate Pilgrims.

I purchased some extra Pilgrim eggs on eBay from a farm in Missouri. Although the seller packaged them well, the post office seriously mishandled the box, crushing one side and breaking one of the eggs, which leaked all over.

Smashed Pilgrim egg in bubble wrap

The problem with this is that fertile eggs have an air cell within them that can be damaged if they are jarred and jostled too hard. Though the remaining eleven eggs are not cracked, there’s little chance of them developing if the air cells are damaged.

Eleven eggs from another farm plus three from Abigail; our hope is to increase genetic diversity in our flock.

I have propped up the purchased eggs with the blunt end up in hopes of getting the air cells to repair themselves back at the top of the eggs.

Here is the progress on Abigail’s eggs that I put in the other incubator about 12 days ago:

You can see a well-formed and intact air cell at the top of the egg. The blood vessels in the developing chorioallantoic membrane are also visible.

It is still a longshot that we will actually be able to hatch any goslings, but so far everything is moving in the right direction with Abigail’s eggs. Now that the weather is warming up, we have stopped collecting the eggs she is laying in hopes of enticing her to sit on a clutch and hatch them the old-fashioned way!

I found an interesting thread on training geese on the Backyard Chickens forum. Olive Hill, an experienced goose-raiser, shared the following comment:

One only needs to observe a gaggle of geese interacting with one another to know what they do and do not understand…Geese will understand if you get physical with them in the same way that they get physical with each other.

A goose fight almost always begins the same way. One goose, who either believes himself alpha to or wishes to be alpha to another, hands out discipline for a behavioral infraction. It may be that Goose A believed Goose B grazed too close to him, or Goose B may have walked between Goose A and his favorite mate. Whatever the infraction Goose A disciplines Goose B. This may be a nip, it may be a snaked neck and a wing spread, it may be a hiss. Whatever the discipline, Goose B has two choices: 1) He may accept it and obey by refraining from the behavior in question (and generally removing himself from Goose A’s immediate vicinity) or 2) he may challenge Goose A to exert his own dominance thereby proving his actions were not wrong — the dominant goose does as he pleases and therefore, if Goose B proves HE is, in fact, dominant, then his behavior was not punishable.

So let’s stop here and relate this to a human goose interaction. Say you have a Gander, who we will simply call Gander for the purpose of this exercise. You are weeding your flowerbed when Gander nips you. Here we have Goose A disciplining Goose B. This means that Gander either believes himself alpha to you or wishes to be alpha to you and has chosen this opportunity to try to exert that dominance. You have two choices. You can accept the discipline by not effectively reminding him of the true hierarchy of your relationship. Or you can put him in his place. Obviously we know the appropriate choice here. You need to challenge his discipline to determine, in no uncertain terms, that you are alpha to him.

So let’s go back to our goose on goose interaction. Goose B has decided that he will challenge Goose A’s discipline. What does he do here? He meets Goose A’s advance with an equal advance of his own. Usually this is the point in the interaction where wings begin to spread and necks snake. Goose B snakes his neck and spreads his wings at Goose A. This says “You may NOT discipline ME!”

So let’s go back to a human goose interaction at this point. This is why I always encourage people to spread their arms, posture and snake their neck as the first line of defense against an advancing Gander. This is what he understands as the first step in a challenge to him. This gives him the option to back down before the interaction must escalate to a physical one. Many, many, many ganders will stop right here. They are bluffers, those geese. They like to talk a big game, but are not often prepared to actually play the game they talk. But what if he doesn’t?

If Goose A decides not to back down when Goose B does not accept his discipline, this is the point at which their interaction gets physical. They will dance around at one another, much like boxers in a ring, until one sees an opening to grab the other by the base of the neck. Once one grabs on, they both grab on.

Now, it’s not really reasonable for you to be dancing around in a circle with a goose waiting for an opening to grab him by the base of the neck so you can beat the tar out of him with your “wings” (we’ll get to the beat the tar out of one another portion in a moment). It’s also not fair to the goose because you don’t have a base of the neck at his level onto which HE can grab. So what’s a goose owner to do? Look at what comes next in the goose to goose interaction.

Once they have ahold of one another, before the beating begins, what happens in this natural position? Their chests bump. Hard.

So what can you do that he will understand as the second step in a challenge? Bump his chest. Hard. This is also why blunt toed boots are excellent foot wear for chores. A good, hard chest bump tells the gander you will fight him over this. He understands it, it the normal progression in a challenge. It also mimics the natural dynamic between two geese as when you bump him, he will be tossed back a little bit, losing his ground to you. When two geese are bumping one another, it causes them to occasionally lose their grip on the opposing goose.

What happens if the chest bump isn’t sufficient? Do it again. It would truly be a rare gander that would escalate an interaction to the bump stage and then not follow through after just one bump. In a goose on goose fight they will repeatedly bump and push one another with their chests. I, personally, will bump up to five or six times before taking it further. This mimics their natural progression. It also gives him ample opportunity to rethink his actions.

But what if he doesn’t? What comes after the chest bump? Here’s where the goose on goose action gets ugly. What comes after chest bumping, to put it bluntly, is beating the ever loving poop out of one another with their wings. This can take a long time, is likely to result in many large bruises and sometimes only ends when one or both geese are literally so exhausted they cannot possibly carry on.

I do not recommend getting into a wing beating match with a goose. It will hurt. And the bruises will last for weeks. I have never been in a wing beating match with a goose but I have had to break up wing beating matches between geese and the size and severity of the bruises I can assure you are not worth engaging them in the exact language they speak. Instead, like the grabbing onto the base of the neck, we need to look just a little bit further in the fight to see what happens. Now, some goose fights resolve themselves during the wing beating match. Those are usually the less evenly matched fights. Your goose does not realize he is not evenly matched with you however, so it’s okay if we ignore those fights and focus on the fights that progress to the sheer exhaustion stage. In these fights the beating continues for what seems like forever, when one or both (usually both in an evenly matched fight) begins to tire it slows, they start throwing those chest bumps they used in the beginning back into the mix as it’s less taxing and eventually one goose will fully pin down the other. In essence, whichever goose is more exhausted ends up pinned — and therefore the loser. The pinning goes on for a few seconds to a minute, however long the winner feels like punishing the loser and then the loser is let up to tuck tail and run.

So if we skip the wing beating for our human-goose interaction, what we need to do is skip straight to the pinning. You can do this one of two ways, you can literally pin him to the ground or you can pick him up and hold him very firmly with an attitude of meaning business. Both accomplish the same thing. They immobilize the goose, with force, for an amount of time the goose has no control over. One thing to remember when doing this is the goose should be positioned to run from you when you set him down. So if you pin him on the ground, you should swing him around to face away from you.

And finally we have the victory lap stage. No matter how exhausting the fight, you will not see an alpha gander let a good beating go unacknowledged. He will spread his wings, stand tall, run to his gaggle and honk his head off about it. Now, your neighbors may find you quite amusing (and possibly insane) if you were to run around your yard honking with your arms spread out like wings. But you CAN mimic the effect by saying something aloud. I like “THAT’S WHAT I THOUGHT!” in the retreating goose’s general direction for good measure. (note: I in no way guarantee this will exempt you from being seen as the neighborhood crazy. LOL!) But this is, of course, optional. Though a good touch, I must say.

So, to recap. In a goose on goose interaction, you have:

The Discipline — Can manifest in many ways.
The Challenge — Usually snaked necks and spread wings
The Dance
The Neck Grab
The Chest Bumping
The Wing Beating
The Exhaustion
The Pinning
The Retreat (for the loser)
The Victory Lap (for the winner)

For human to goose interactions, we can cut the list down:

The Discipline — Can manifest in many ways. Any unacceptable behavior by a goose should be interpreted as this step. The Challenge — Snake your neck, spread your wings, posture over him, hiss for good measure. The Chest Bumping — Remember: it’s a rare goose who will give up after just one. Give him 3 – 6 bumps to change his mind. The Pinning — Grab the neck, turn the goose away from you and pin him with force. Either on the ground or in your arms. Hold. The Retreat (for the loser) — This is why you turned him away from you. Set him up for success, give him a clear retreat path. The Victory Lap (for the winner) — Optional. I guess.

I found her comment interesting because it perfectly describes the interactions with Uncle Waldo that I’ve had. I’ve clearly let him get away with challenging me and winning, so he naturally believes himself to be alpha to me. Our youngest daughter, on the other hand, chases him around whenever he comes around her snaking his neck; she just found it entertaining to chase him, but it turns out it was exactly the right thing to do. And Phil’s “playing baby” is analogous to “the pinning,” which is why Uncle Waldo never challenges him.

Since I have only one gander, I was curious about Olive Hill’s gander-to-gander dominance interaction, and I found a short video of a gander fight which perfectly exemplifies her description:

Pilgrim geese, as I’ve mentioned before, are “sex-linked”, which means right from hatching you can tell the males from the females based on color. Here you can see Uncle Waldo and Abigail as newly hatched goslings:

Abigail is dark gray: Uncle Waldo is lighter grey with more yellow in his fuzz.

Here is Abigail today, standing next to a Rouen duck:

She has made a good-sized nest out of straw in the duck-n-goose house:

The ducks have been sneaking into her nest to drop some of their eggs. But ducks seem to be a lot less picky than chickens; whereas the chickens will only lay in their nesting boxes, the ducks have been dropping their eggs any old place.

We have 4 duck breeds: our light weights are Indian Runners, our medium weights are Buffs and Crested Whites, and our heavy-weights are Rouens. You can see how much bigger Abigail’s eggs are than the ducks’:

By way of comparison, here you can see an extra large chicken egg, one of the medium weight duck eggs, and the Pilgrim goose egg:

Because we are having a cold snap with temperatures well below freezing right now, Phil has been collecting Abigail’s eggs every day and storing them in a wire basket in the basement where it is about 60°F. If they are kept cool but not cold, out of direct sunlight, and turned over every day, the eggs will stay viable for several weeks.

We had been thinking that next week when temperatures come back up, we would return Abigail’s eggs to her nest. But now I have decided to incubate four of them all the way through hatching and let Abigail lay a new clutch of eggs to sit on. From what I have read, Pilgrim geese are not the most skilled at hatching their own eggs

One of my co-workers had a couple of egg incubators she wasn’t planning to use anymore, so she gave them to me. The model I am using is a Lyon Turn-X by GQF:

This model allows me to control the temperature and humidity and has an automatic turner that rolls the eggs 180 degrees every hour so I don’t have to remember to turn them myself.

In 7 days we will candle the eggs, and if this clown…

…has been doing his job, we SHOULD see this:

The dark spot is the developing embryo. Image from Backyard Chickens goose forum